I should start by reminding everybody that Justice 4 Two Sisters is following the case closely. So many bloggers have been following this story closely. Feel free to put your links to your postings in the comment section or links to particularly good analyses.
I don’t expect that we will be hearing much about the case until the DNA evidence comes back in a few weeks, but I did read at least one report where the DA was saying that if they don’t have DNA he doesn’t want to go ahead with the case. I’m nor sure if that report is correct or not because earlier he was saying that he is confident that he can win the case without DNA. We’ll see what happens.
1. The victim’s father speaks out to a local TV station. Including this statement,
The man described what his daughter looked like when she was released from a hospital.
“Her face was all swollen up, her jaw. She couldn’t half walk. One of her legs was hurt,” he said.
The alleged victim, an N.C. Central University student, mother of two and part-time exotic dancer, had been hired to perform at a party. That was when she claimed the sexual assault took place. The attorney for the lacrosse players said the men are innocent.
“There is no doubt in my mind, because I’ve seen the look in her face. I’ve seen the bruises on her face,” the alleged victim’s father said.
The man said his daughter’s physical scars pale in comparison to the emotional ones, and that he hopes his daughter finds new ways to make ends meet.
2. Duke University Student Government. Also includes an interesting link to a pro-feminist men’s group.
3. The lawyers representing the players call the media hype a “lynch mob” and give a hint at what their strategy is going to be–the victim staged it and the DA is out to get re-elected (classic condemn the condemners strategy).
4. Student activists continue protesting. It seems that some students are quietly posting banners supporting the team, while other are openly protesting. They have also noted that this is not the first incident where a LAX player has been accused of racism (one put a black face picture on Facebook and the other is said to have made comments about Black fraternity members eating watermelon and chicken.)
5. National and International media descend on Duke. (So my claim that this would not make national news was wrong. Thank goodness.)
6. This is a very good story from the Raleigh News Observer. They say that the police are confident that the earlier call about the racial slur did not come from the victim. They also say when police showed up at the house to investigate the slur no one answered. I also encourage people to listen to the full 911 tapes posted on this page. I am confident that the first caller is a White woman. (Definitely worth reading if you are following the case. The Raleigh paper has had much better coverage than the national media.)
7. The Duke Chronicletakes a decidedly apologist turn in defense of the lacrosse team, saying things like the racial slurs were alleged. The headline says, “White, Black-or Duke?” a very typical colorblind phrasing. (I have not seen that neighbor who over heard the racial slurs back down one iota–I guess the student paper is insinuating that the victim and the neighbor are lying. Here we go.) Here is a markedly different editorial from a Black woman at the school (make sure to read the anonymous comments left at the bottom and note that at 3PM on the 31st eastern time there were not comments on the White, Black-or Duke? article.)
8. An article out of Australia that uses the stop snitchin’ analogy like similar to the one I made in the earlier post.
9. The local Durham paper has some quotes from the district attorney Mr. Nifong. We probably won’t be hearing anything for a while.
10. A good story from the local paper that details how forensic evidence is collected in rape cases. It also raised the question as to why it took so long to gather evidence.
11. Some are questioning the timeline of the two calls to police. Here is the link to the story.
12. And last but not least someone who says, he believes that the “Duke Raping” never occurred. If you want to see more conspiracy theorists like this feel free to come to my blog Rachel’s Tavern, folks with this view are trying to take over the comments section. Please feel free to come do battle with them.
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Who one chooses to empathize with is who one identifies with.
http://happytoilet.blogspot.com/2006/04/winter-of-dukes-discontent.html
I am so angry right now. At all of it. The one thing that just made me crazed from this post is the “lynch mob.”
A white southern criminal defense lawyer, fifth of his name and profession, defending a white boy at Duke playing lacrosse from an accusation of gang rape. And he says the DA is making it a lynch mob atmosphere? I want to say I don’t believe someone with any sense of history could do that, but I believe it. Looks like that guy is a big republican neo-con variety and none of us are surprised.
Angry, I can very clearly see that. All of the “let’s give these guys a chance it’s ruining their life” crowd clearly don’t have empathy for the victim.
It is possible to have empathy for the victim and still believe that the proper forum for the determination of guilt is a courtroom, rather than the sphere of public debate.
I am so angry right now. At all of it. The one thing that just made me crazed from this post is the “lynch mob.”
A white southern criminal defense lawyer, fifth of his name and profession, defending a white boy at Duke playing lacrosse from an accusation of gang rape. And he says the DA is making it a lynch mob atmosphere? I want to say I don’t believe someone with any sense of history could do that, but I believe it. Looks like that guy is a big republican neo-con variety and none of us are surprised.
I wanted to punch that guy on the face. I dont know how defense lawyers live with themselves. They knowingly defend ass holes like these players.
Spread the word: http://justiceforher.blogspot.com/
Face it, the “proper forum for the determination of guilt” is going to be anywhere someone has an opinion. There are people trotting around Duke’s campus saying that the lacrosse team is innocent, good luck trying to tell them to wait for a courtroom. There should be a public debate, a debate that will evolve from speculative to concrete as the evidence is released. I’m sure you were posting similar advice for O.J. and Kobe (and no one listened then either). The question is “How is this going to unfold?” and what will be the lasting implications?
Angry Naked Bum:
Well, that’s pretty damned offensive. About the only thing that could be said in its defence is that it was intended to be satire. If so, then it failed. Satire has to be distinguishable from what it is satirising.
If, which seems likely, you meant what you said…
I better stop now, before I start breeching Ampersand’s rules on courtesy.
It is possible to have empathy for the victim and still believe that the proper forum for the determination of guilt is a courtroom, rather than the sphere of public debate.
Thing is, admonishing one side to “leave it up to the courts” (and it is only one side; I’ve never heard anybody told they shouldn’t assert an accused rapist’s innocence because the jury hadn’t rendered a verdict) equates a legal standard with a moral one, and sends the message that it’s not really rape if they can get away with it.
Jeff, great point.
Daran, I’m pretty sure that was satire.
Speaking as someone who’s a bit older than most posters here, I am actually heartened and astonished by this case. People are acting as though white men raping a black woman is a crime. And white women are backing her up! In the South! I’m honestly gobsmacked.
For most of this country’s history, and certainly for most of North Carolina’s, white-on-black rape was *not* a crime. Sometimes it wasn’t a crime even on the books, and the rest of the time it was unthinkable that charges might even be filed, much less prosecuted.
I don’t know if anyone since William Faulkner has been honest about the sexual dynamics between the races in the South, but he was. Southern white fear of “nigrahs marrying our women” was (and I assume is) largely driven by the fear that black men would exact vengence for the way white men have traditionally treated black women — as their rightful prey.
Even if the case never comes to court, the fact that there’s an uproar about it across color lines is an enormous advance over the situation in my youth, and I’m really impressed by how far North Carolina has come.
Actually, Doctor, that was one of my first reactions to hearing about it since the first thing I heard about was the protests happening there. My god, they’re at *Duke*! And that was before I found out she was African-American.
Robert, neither I nor Rachel S. said anything about guilt or innocence. Would you like to comment on the post or something we said? We’re talking about history and social science and criminology and justice and genetics. We’re talking about keeping a case of rape on the public eye, a case of a kind that historically and usually gets ignored. We’re not saying they’re guilty, hell I don’t even know their names, any of them. We’re saying don’t do what this society usually does and say gosh, poor priviledged little boys with all their lives ahead of them, why ruin those bright bright futures because some women says they were mean to her.
Though personally I think personally that every single one of ’em is guilty of at least not ratting out the others. And we know why that is, don’t we Robert, why they aren’t talking?
We talked about how Jane Doe from Orange County is a hero. This woman, this North Carolina Jane Doe is a hero too, for even getting as far as calling the police, she’s doing something I can’t even imagine how difficult.
And Robert comments that gosh, guys, they’re not proved guilty yet!
We never said they were guilty, and what a court says is not always the truth.
I’ve never heard anybody told they shouldn’t assert an accused rapist’s innocence because the jury hadn’t rendered a verdict
That’s because we are all presumed innocent of any crimes until the accusation is dealt with before a court of law. We, as good citizens, should all be asserting the innocence of this lacrosse team until a judgement has been reached.
Doctor Science, There is a part of me that agrees with you here….One woman said something similar over at my blog. For a White DA to be this outspoken–it would have never happened in the not so distant past.
Tangoman, we are presumed innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law. That doesn’t mean people can’t discuss, accuse and defend themselves and others anywhere else. If one is a public figure then one should consider the effect of ones words but for us to discuss the possible guilt or innocence of these men has no effect on their receiving a fair trial. To assert otherwise sounds like you’re trying to stifle debate. You wouldn’t want to stifle debate, would you?
Ampersand:
Amperand, help me out here. Satire has to go beyond what it satirises, to expose it by taking it to its logical conclusion. In what way does his remarks go beyond what the moronic anti-feminist rape apologists say?
Jeff:
They’re not really the same. Asserting that a person is guilty, if they’re actually innocent, compounds the slander that they’ve suffered. Calling them innocent, if they’re actually not, doesn’t injure them.
To the extent that asserting an alledged rapist’s innocence imputes wrong-doing on the part of the complainant, then they shouldn’t do it, until she (or he) has been proven guilty. There, you’ve now heard someone say it.
I don’t think it unreasonable for those not involved in a case to adhere to the practice of using the word ‘alledged’ until there has been a conviction. It is certainly not the ‘message’ of the word that the allegation is false, only that there is doubt, which there certainly is, in the instant case, and others.
The claim to the moral high ground for your ‘side’ is considerably weakened by the observation that in the ‘insufficiently tramatised’ case, many on your ‘side’ were routinely referring to the alleged victim as a ‘rape victim’, with no ‘alleged’ in sight, (and, even worse, to her alledged rapists as ‘rapists’) when there is no evidence whatsoever in the public domain to impute their guilt, or her rape-victimhood. Nothing. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Ninguno.
TangoMan:
We can assert their presumed innocence, yes. The italicised word carries the implication that the presumption might be set aside. I don’t agree that there is a positive duty to assert their presumed innocence. There is no duty to discuss the case at all, but if we do discuss it, I think we should use language that acknowledges the doubt.
Equally, the complainant in this case should also be presumed innocent of false reporting, or any other wrongdoing. These presumptions do not conflict.
Asserting actual innocence is a different matter. Based on the reports we’ve seen so far, it looks like a violent, racially-motived rape was committed by three members of the Lacrosse team. That being the case, not only is the no obligation to assert their actual innocence, but it would be absurd to do so.
Angry Naked Bum:
True, but the deeper question is why do people identify with the alleged rapists? Because they fear a false charge of rape? Or a genuine one?
Daran:
If this is true for alleged rapists, then it also must be true for accusations made about alleged victims. In the later situation, the person is not only innocent, but being villified for telling the truth and reporting the actions of the guilty.
That’s because we are all presumed innocent of any crimes until the accusation is dealt with before a court of law. We, as good citizens, should all be asserting the innocence of this lacrosse team until a judgement has been reached.
This is not consistently applied to all crimes, however. It only becomes a concern in the case of rape.
And frankly, there was one particularly egregrious case in Chicago where the pack-rape was filmed and the guys were acquited anyway. I still maintain they are guilty of rape. I’m not going to censor myself for that–I certainly don’t see rape apologists censoring themselves when it comes to spreading slander and gossip about the women in these cases.
Sheelzebub:
It’s applied consistently by me to all crimes, including cases of alledged false rape accusation.
Have you watched the film in question? Have you seen all of the evidence presented in court? Have you heard and fairly evaluated their defence? There was a film in the case I just referred to, but I won’t drop the ‘alledged’ part, unless and until someone who has done all of these things pronounces her guilty.
And you hold yourself to no higher standard?
Apparently not. You appear to regard a bare accusation, with no evidence whatsoever in the public domain to be sufficient to class someone as a “RAPE SURVIVOR” (your capitalisation).
I’m not going to call the complainant in that case a false accuser. Normally I would, given that she has been convicted, just as I would call someone convicted of rape a “rapist”. But in this case significant questions have been raised about the propriety of her conviction.
My point is that what appears to be your standard for sufficient evidence – a bare accusation – is a standard that false accusers can meet, which would seem to make you an apologist for false accusers
Me:
Uh, let’s try that again. The approach I advocate is applied by me consistently, but it’s not exactly the same as what Tangoman advocated.
Strange goings on here. The post by Marcella Chester to which I am replying is visible above, but not in the right-hand menu.
Marcella Chester:
If they’re acually innocent.
If they were telling the truth.
The general slurring and vilification of alleged victims disgusts me more than you could possibly imagine. I feel the same way about the general slurring and vilification of those accused of rape. Some of those accused of rape will be actually guilty and some will be innocent, just as some alleged victims will be actually guilty of having made a false accusation, and some innocent. I don’t agree that even the guilty deserve to be slurred or vilified, and I certainly don’t agree with the policy of “slur them all and let God sort it out” that so many on the one side and the other seem to practice.
For a moment, lets turn the tableS.
Change the story title to one of these scenarios:
1)”White female raped by 3 of Dukes (white) lacrosse team”
2)”White female raped by 3 of Dukes (black) lacrosse team”
Where would the outcry, a call for speedy justice, and condemnation be then?!!!
Let alone, if there were a ‘demand’ for DNA samples from all of the “African American” players?
DUAL STANDARDS – Plain and simple
This says it all:
http://www.sportsline.com/spin/story/9359522
BC
“That’s because we are all presumed innocent of any crimes until the accusation is dealt with before a court of law. We, as good citizens, should all be asserting the innocence of this lacrosse team until a judgement has been reached.”
Actually, the duties of a citizen (and our legal proxies) at this point are to determine whether or not a) a crime has occurred (Yes, according to medical evidence and the victim’s testimony), and b) against whom there is enough evidence to arrest someone and hold a hearing. The burden of proof to haul someone in for the initial hearing & deposition is far less than for a convinction. I’m sure the definition differs from state to state, but we’re looking at something like “How likely is X to be guilty of the crime in question.” In this case, the victim has first names, substantial evidence of physical assault of several kinds (including near-fatal strangulation), and has identified three men from the LaCrosse team from their photographs. Personally, I don’t understand why arrests haven’t been made yet, since the above is more than enough to justify arraignment, and because the guilty party/ies may well skip town if the DNA comes back with significantly incriminating results.
As a citizen, I hereby say with a clear conscience, yes, arrests should be made and arraignment scheduled for the three guys she picked out of photographs RIGHT NOW. (Of course, I also think the house and dorms should have been searched at least two weeks sooner than they were…) No, I do not assert the “presumed innocence” of everyone on the LaCrosse team, because they no longer belong in that category. They are now somewhere between guilt and innocence, and damn well better not leave town any time soon. I hereby declare that some of them are officially, hereby “under suspicion.”
Happy?
Got any evidence that there would be any difference in the outcry, calls for speedy justice, and condemnation from… er… whoever it is you are criticising? No? Thought not.
So you ASSUME, without evidence that these unspecified people have dual standards, then condemn them for it.
I have read lots of articles dealing with the Duke rape and even listen to some national talk shows(Rush) where the victim was refer to as a Whore. It seems to me that a great deal of people are dismisve of the victim because of her choosen job. Because, the young lady in question was working as a dancer it seems to make her more of a target for the media and as well as the team. Because of this woman status she has been seen as less than. It seen as if on the oldest reason every used for rape is “she ask for it”. Mabe she ask for it, because she desided that dancing for money would in the long run help her better herself by funding school thus improving the live of her children also. Mabe she was asking for it because she dance in little or next to nothing in front of young men and insited their lust. Why didn’t she know that by doing this she was just asking for it. I think that we all need to take a look at how this womans own actions are beening looked at a causing factor in why she was attacked.
Yes, one should not be outraged because this woman was black alone , however one should be outraged because of the implication from it. We are still not beyond the point of what a woman is doing at the time of attack, how she was dressed, or how drunk , high or what ever at the time she was attacked. There are those within our number that ask: Well why was she there? well she should have know that what would happen. She shouldn’t have been wearing that tight,low cut what ever.
This attack on this woman was not only because this woman was black, she was also attacked because she was in the the eyes of her attackers less than.
Nursinggirl, you’re saying something no one else is brave enough to say, and I applaud you.
I am a liberated, extremely independent woman, so, you can’t accuse me of being biased against women. And I’ve got no ties to sports or Duke what-so-ever. So, I am not apologizing for this behavior. The guilty must be jailed. Period.
However,
I’m getting tired of the elephant in the livingroom, the one thing that’s not Politically correct enough to be spoken outloud:
I grew up with simple rules: Don’t do anything stupid. Be responsible.
I’d like to point out that this woman would not have been harmed if she hadn’t gone into a private house full of drunken college boys and removed her clothing.
Go ahead and attack me, but, no one forced her into that dangerous situation. She went in without a backup plan, and no one strong enough to protect her. No bouncer, no cell phone, no one waiting in a car.
Now, please do not jump to the conclusion that I think she deserved it. Of course not. But, really, why can’t we all admit that maybe this was not a good career move? They were drunk. Violently drunk. She knew that. They were unsupervised. There were countless numbers of them. She went into the master bedroom alone with a number of them and took off her clothes. What in the hell was she thinking?
I don’t walk down the middle of the highway, because it’s dangerous. I don’t climb into the polar bear cage in the zoo because it’s dangerous. And I don’t go into private homes with no supervision, with uncountable drunken college boys and take my clothes off, because it’s dangerous.
The prosecution and sentencing of the guilty parties will certainly have racial implications, and racism is alive and well and should not be tolerated. But does anyone really think that these same boys in this same condition would have stopped and said, “Wait! This is immoral and illegal. She’s white. Let her go!” I seriously doubt it. They were well beyond that much reason.
The only racial aspect I see to this is that if the team had been black and the girl was white, the team would have been in handcuffs in a jail cell within the hour, and would be there still. But the crime itself was not neccesarilly racial.
I don’t know what laws allow for legal or illegal stripper services in that or any state, but, it seems to me that the crime was committed by our lenient society which allows this kind of commerce in the first place.
Why do we allow this kind of indecent “entertainment” to exist at all? How did they find her to hire her? In the phone book?
I wish it had never happened and my sympathy goes to her. I hope the guilty are appropriately punished.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, fraidtosayit. That’s bullshit. Before you pass judgement on this ‘stupid’ woman and compare her earning a living to walking down the middle of the freeway, you better display some good judgement of your own, which you haven’t. It’s easy to judge those who have lives one doesn’t have to live.
If being a stripper is so damned dangerous, then why not lock up the men who fund it? Are all men rapists or not? Because in comparing stripping to a variety of things which it does not resemble you’ve basically said that being in the company of rich white boys is as dangerous as entering a polar bear’s cage. In that case, the problem is not the stripping, but the guys. H ow about we lock them up instead? How about we condemn them instead?
I grew up with simple rules: Don’t do anything stupid. Be responsible.
Rules which also apply to the Duke players, don’t you think?
What in the hell was she thinking?
She was probably thinking that she really, really needed the money from the gig, and that none of these guys would be stupid enough to do more than mouth off and try a little grab-ass. She also probably wasn’t making enough money to hire a bouncer, and figured that the presence of a second person, a witness, would be enough to stop anything terrible from happening.
These are not unreasonable assumptions. That’s usually how most such bachelor parties go–if things get too out of line, the women leave and the party’s over. As a professional stripper, this probably wasn’t the first bachelor party she’d attended.
At least, that’s my take, as a former professional stripper. You got any basis for your take other than a good view from a high horse?
By the way, “our lenient society” did not make the deliberate choice to drag a woman into a bathroom, choke her, and rape her vaginally and anally. I’m not sure why you are having such difficulty with the concept that these men broke the rules you claim to honor: they did something stupid, and they were irresponsible.
And if those boys hadn’t taken their penises out of their damn shorts themselves, forced those dicks into this woman’s cunt, her ass, her mouth, if they hadn’t held her down, hadn’t strangled her…
well then they wouldn’t be in this mess then would they?
Those drunken college boys are fully responsible for their erections. It’s not like penises just fall into women’s vaginas willy-nilly.
If men don’t want to be responsible for their erections, why don’t they just cut them off?
“H ow about we lock them (the boys) up instead? How about we condemn them instead? ”
I started by suggesting that.
“these men broke the rules you claim to honor: they did something stupid, and they were irresponsible. ”
I started with that, too.
But the fact remains that women who don’t want to find themselves in a dangerous place, like an unsupervised college drinking party, know better than to go into one alone and take their clothes off.
Like a woman who goes off alone on a strange island like Aruba with men she’s just met.
Like a woman who stays out alone until 3 am in a bar in a bad section of Brooklyn.
If these women had stayed with their friends they’d be unharmed today. Period. Of course the people who harmed them should be punished according to the law, but, why did these women leave themselves in these vulnerable circumstances at all? None of them were abducted. They went freely with these people they didn’t know.
And why do people get so enraged when I state the obvious? Stay home, or go out with people you know in safe places. Why does that make you all so angry?
Stay home, or go out with people you know in safe places. Why does that make you all so angry?
Are you genuinely asking, or are you one of those guys who gets a stiffy from the Internet equivalent of sticking the girls’ pigtails in the inkwell? I mean, c’mon.
fraidtosayit:
The mere fact of your being female, (and liberated, independent, etc.), doesn’t make you not biased. (I’m not saying you are biased. For all I know, you could be an equal-opportunity victim-blamer)
OK, we all admit, that. Now what?
Yes you did. You more or less ended with that too. That’s about as much attention as you gave the alledged actions of the men involved. The rest of the two of your posts that I’ve read were an indictment of the woman.
Now there is a key difference between what the woman is alledged to have done, and what the men are alleged to have done.
Going to a party full of rowdy, drunk men isn’t a crime. It’s not an offence against anyone.
Stripping at a party where you’ve been invited to do isn’t a crime. It’s not an offence against anyone.
Hurling racist abuse at someone is a crime, and is an offense against someone.
Beating them up is a crime, and is an offence against them.
Raping them… You know what I’m going to say about that, don’t you?
So on the one hand, we have the alleged acts of the women – not offensive, not criminal. On the other we have the alleged acts of the men – offences, criminal acts.
So one would expect that when reasonable people pass judgement[1] on these matters, they focus on the alleged criminals and their actions, and give the alleged victim, the non-offender, passing attention at best.
The real elephant in the living room is why so many people adopt the opposite stance. The criminals (alledged in this instance, but I’m talking more generally here) get the passing attention, while the bulk of the condemnation falls on the victim.
This phenomenon is common enough to have a name. We call it ‘victim-blaming’. It’s one of a pair of ugly sisters – the other being ‘rape apology’, which are known to hang about with a thoroughly disreputable fellow called ‘rape-denial’. I have a few theories as to why people do it, but I’d be interested in hearing ‘from the horses (elephant’s?) mouth’, as it were. Why do you do it? Why do you focus your condemnation overwhelmingly upon the, arguably unwise, maybe stupid, perhaps eve reckless, but ultimately utterly inoffensive acts of the alleged victim, while giving such scant attention to the appalingly offensive and criminal alleged acts committed against her?
[1]As distinct from investigating the factual basis of the allegations, when obviously the alledged victims actions are scrutinised closely. But this is very different from judging them.
fraidtosayit, You’re saying that all men are rapists, basically. Also, you’re not as independant as you boast about, because you’re toeing the standard victim-blaming line.
So, what do you want? Purdah and chadors? You’re a victim blamer. Blaming the victim does no damned good at all.
Doran,
Well stated argument. Thankyou. I agree with everything you’ve said. There is a blame the victim defense, and that’s wrong. Definitely.
I do not know if stripping in this state is a crime or not, but that’s not my argument. There are alot of irresponsible behaviors that do not have descreet laws written for them: Sticking your tongue on a frozen piece of metal, sticking a nail in a light socket, etc. Those behaviors are nevertheless dangerous and irresponsible.
Of course assaulting a woman is breaking the law. Of course. They should be punished, but her voluntary actions will make that prosecution difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
But the question that seems to raise so much ire is that of responsibility.
She relinquished responsibility for her own safety when she walked into that house.
Here’s the real question: Who bears responsibility for this woman’s safety?
Her parents? Friends? Neighbors? Boss? Children? The police?
It seems to me that anyone who volunteers for this kind of dangerous work (taking your clothes off without any supervision) has relinquished responsibility for her own safety to 40+ drunken college boys. Of all the people I would trust, they are just about last on my list.
The culture of blame that fuels the “blame the victim defense” (which is quite real and immoral) is also at work when people relinquish responsibility for themselves by taking on risky behaviors, be they recreational or “work,” (which in my opnion, stripping really doesn’t quite qualify as work, anyway.)
When you are a stuntman in a movie you have to sign away your right to sue. You’re relinquishing their responsibility to you to maintain your safety.
The stripping industry doesn’t require dancers to sign a release because they don’t quite believe that this is a legitimate enough business. I doubt seriously if there is one insurance agency on the planet that would take on that kind of risk: Insuring the safety of house to house strippers.
It doesn’t seem to me that anyone but the woman is responsible ultimately for her own safety, and she chose to trust the wrong people. She can now attempt to prove in a court of law that she was not seriously contributing to the crime, but, that process may prove to be quite damaging to her life, as well. I don’t know any women who have traveled that route, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Getting into the court system usually has negative results for both prosecutors and defenders. But that is her right, of course, and I wish her well in her attempt. Personally, I do take her side and hope she will prevail. But I would have been happier had she saved herself the entire experience.
The interesting thing in this is how enraged people become when I suggest that we all bear some responsibility for our own actions.
fraidtosayit, it makes people angry when you suggest that women change behavior to avoid rape because 1) it doesn’t really help (I’ve been raped twice, once in my own bed, and once in a situation most rational people would have assumed to be safe) and because 2) it is proposed instead of the more rational option of restricting the movement of potential rapists.
Why not curfew men instead? Restrict their movements and their private contacts with women? Women aren’t committing the rapes, not in significant numbers, so why are women expected to curtail their movements? It is a measure of the blindness of privilege that the proposal to restrict the movement of potential rapists draws outrage, while the proposal to restrict the movement of potential victims draws applause.
To add to this, as has been said before, you seem to be falling into the “just world” hypothesis, that because the world is just, only people who are “asking for it” have bad things happen to them. It’s one of the last signs of maturity when people begin to realize and accept that sometimes, stuff just happens, and no one is to blame. Or in the case of rape, that rape just happens, and only the rapist is to blame.
icking your tongue on a frozen piece of metal, sticking a nail in a light socket, etc. Those behaviors are nevertheless dangerous and irresponsible.
And are both actions involving inanimate forces. The frozen piece of metal does not have the choice of freezing your tongue or not. The light socket does not make a conscious decision to shock you.
Human beings, as you continually note only when you’re talking about the rape victim, make choices. The rapists could have chosen to simply pay the strippers they’d hired, enjoyed the show, and sent the strippers home with a nice tip. They could have complimented the women instead of yelling racist remarks. I’m not sure why you feel rape was as inevitable as the flow of electricity through a socket. Projection, perhaps?
She can now attempt to prove in a court of law that she was not seriously contributing to the crime
Where did you get the idea that she would have to prove this in court? Do you also believe that to convict a burglar, the prosecutor has to show that the victims didn’t leave any windows or doors unlocked?
By the way, stuntment don’t “sign away their right to sue”. The waiver they sign shows that they had an understanding of the risks they are facing. So a stuntman who signs a waiver for a motorcycle-wipeout scene can’t sue, claiming he had no idea he might break a leg. He CAN sue, however, if it turns out the studio rigged the motorcycle with explosives, and didn’t tell him.
I’m sorry to hear you were raped.
What would or would not have helped in your case isn’t really relevent to the case at hand.
May I suggest a more modest proposal? Let’s just curfew black men. That would address (off the top of my head here) about 40% of all rapes in the US, while restricting the freedom of less than 5% of the population.
Much snippage; if I don’t quote it, you may assume that I agree with it.
Mythago:
While your substantive point is well made, I don’t suppose there is any chance we could discuss these matters without the kind of innuendo in the last two words? It really is offensive, no less so when directed at someone whose views are themselves objectionable.
I think fraidtosayit is confusing a contributory negligence theory of civil liability with criminal responsibility.
One would expect, under those circumstances, the stuntman to sue the studio for negligence. To be comparible to the Duke case, the allegation would have to be that the studio deliberately and maliciously failed to tell him. This, of course, strengthens your point.
Daran. I would like to see a cite for the notion that black men commit rapes far in excess of their population. Most statistics I’m aware of don’t fit with that idea, and certainly most rapes occur in “acquaintance” situations, and are not usually across racial lines.
BTW, I don’t want or need any false sympathy for you, and the fact that I was raped twice in what should have been “safe” situations is indeed extremely relevent to this conversation, especially in the context of some commenters continuing to blame the victim for her rape.
The place a woman is most likely to be attacked is her own home. Clearly she should know better than to assume she is safe there. How irresponsible.
Some of us prefer to focus on the men who forced their dicks into this woman and the burden of re sponsibility that they bear.
If they didn’t want to face rape charges, why did they hire a stripper? Didn’t they know that if they drank beer and had a half naked woman in front of them that they would rape her? Didn’t they know that their beast natures would overcome them — especially as you said, since they were “unsupervised”. …which makes me think – since when is a group of 40 20-something young men incapable of supervising themselves? At what age *do* boys become men? I mean, really.
I had no idea men were such pathetic, weak, creatures in need of supervision when presented with naked female bodies. Here we are, one of the most powerful countries in the world, with a male president, a male run military, male policemen, male judges. Jeepers creepers. One would think that if men have such little impulse control, women should be in these positions. How ’bout all those mechanics with pics of nekkid women on the walls? Are they really just masturbating 24/7 instead of fixing cars? Or are they run to such incontrollable lust, they’re raping in between the lube jobs and the tire rotations?
I would like to see a cite for the notion that black men commit rapes far in excess of their population.
I hope you would find the latest Department of Justice Crime Victimization Statistical Tables (2003) to be an unbaised source. Go to Table #42 There you see that the Black victims report that 87.9% of their alleged rapists were Black and White victims report that 15.5% of of their alleged rapists were Black. All told Blacks are identified as committing 26.71% of all rapes in the US, which is far above what is to be expected from their proportion of the population.
To make this comment applicable to the Duke situation, while you’re looking at the table take a look at the incidence of Black victims identifying alleged White rapists. Some number that is less than 10 rapes, thus too small to measure and the DOJ thus lists it as 0.0%. The alleged Duke rapes are not the tip of some massive societal iceberg.
I don’t find it unbiased. The NCVS, the source of your stats, massively undercounts rapes. And although I can’t prove it, I believe it undercounts marital rape in particular by a huge degree, which is important because a far higher proportion of whites than blacks are married.
You’re kidding, right? Where did you find stats like these?
Most stats on rape are based either on arrests or reported rapes, and that’s why they’re pretty much flawed in terms of accurately depicting how many rapes have occurred and where they have occured, in terms of demographic groups. I’ve known of Black women who’ve been raped or even in relationships with White men were DV has occurred and they do not report in either case or if they do, they are treated badly by the system, because of racist stereotypes that exist today as they did in the past, regarding Black women. So there may be underreporting on that end, as there is underreporting on marital rapes and “acquaintance” or “date” rapes across the board.
The NCVS, the source of your stats, massively undercounts rapes.
If a police report is filed then it is counted. These aren’t convictions that we’re referring to here. That’s a whole other story and I didn’t want to bring up the whole “justice system is racist against blacks” fallacy. These statistics are women’s voices being heard as they make accusations. To me, the counting of accusations is about as fair as you can get.
I need a better argument to support your assertion of bias other than your opinion in the face of facts you find inconvenient. Alternatively, I’m open to looking at another unbiased statistical source. Can you suggest any?
which is important because a far higher proportion of whites than blacks are married.
Neither here nor there ,as all sorts of spinning can be done with this situation. For instance, if rape is violence then we can look at Black rates of violence, which are disproportionate to their population, and infer that this also carries into the realm of marital or couple rape. Or, we can infer that an instance of marital rape increases the chance of divorce thus marital rape is already captured by the higher Black divorce rate. See, we can all spin magic fables when we don’t have data to buttress our arguments.
No, that’s not even slightly true. The NCVS has nothing to do with police reports; it’s a survey.
The problem with the NCVS is that it’s a badly designed survey for measuring rape (and intimate violence, too).
In particular, the NCVS is badly designed for asking about a crime like rape because asking questions about rape in the context of a crime survey sets people up to think of rape in extremely stereotypical ways: that is, “the stranger leaping out of the bushes” rather than “the time my husband pretended not to understand that I was saying no, and after a while it was easier for me to just let him finish.” Even if the woman thinks of the latter instance as a crime, she might not want to report it because she doesn’t want to take the chance that the interviewer will not believe it’s a crime.
Furthermore, the NCVS interviewers don’t take precautions to make sure that the person they’re interviewing is in a private, safe space. How likely is a rape victim to tell an interviewer that they’ve been raped by their spouse or boyfriend if the spouse or boyfriend is in the room while the interview is going on?
For all these reasons, I – and every expert on measuring rape prevalence I’ve ever read who has discussed these matters – believe that the NCVS not only undermeasures rape, but is particularly likely to undermeasure rape committed by intimates, and also rapes that people being interviewed may not be certain were crimes.
Do I have a better source of data for the question you’re asking? No. As it happens, although there are much more accurate sources of information about rape available than the NCVS, none of those collected data about the race of rapists (to my knowledge). However, the fact that no good data source is available doesn’t change the fact that the data source you’re using is not reliable.
Your extremely condescending attitude isn’t appreciated.
However, the fact that no good data source is available doesn’t change the fact that the data source you’re using is not reliable.
Thank you for the detailed critique of the data source. I can agree with your points. As I’ve already stated I’m happy to look at other sources if you can find them.
I thought I wrote a long and insightful (:-D reply to fraidtosayit about why blaming the victim (in this case a black stripper) does nothing to promote responsibility, using my own work environment as an example (I work with rapists, murderers, drug dealers, prostitutes, etc., in large numbers, with minimal security, on a daily basis). Did I forget to send it, or did it get screened or deleted? In any case, blaming the victim for (responsibly) leaving when things got out of hand and (responsibly) bringing a friend back in with her when she was convinced it was safe to retrieve her belongings was ridiculous. Think about it…her cell would have had contact information for her at home, and very likely there were other items that might have led these losers to her home address if she hadn’t retrieved them. Would YOU have left them with people who had demonstrated their hostility?
Similarly, I work in an environment that is far from “safe”, yet I conduct myself in a safe way (as this woman apparently did) . It would still be relatively easy for a client to isolate me and harm me. Certainly clients isolate each other on occasion and harm each other. Should I quit a job that pays the bills, supports my children, (and in my case) greatly satisfies my need to give back to the world, because there’s a small chance that I could be hurt? Am I irresponsible for choosing to work as a social worker? Am I irresponsible for working with homeless people? Do I “deserve” to be raped if there’s a small chance that I could be isolated and attacked? If the answers to these questions is no, why do you hold another working mother who works in a job with some danger (but certainly not the most dangerous job in the world) to a different standard.
Recap. I spend the day surrounded by 120-150 known criminals. The victim in the Duke case spends evenings surrounded by half a dozen middle or upper class college students. Both of us are paid for our services to these people? Which of us is being irresponsible? Which of us deserves to be raped?
Odanu:
Black and ‘others’. (Pardon my poor recollection for not including ‘others’.) account for between 26.0% (2000) and 46.8% (2003) of recorded rapes, attempted rapes, and sexual assaults by a single assailant between 1996 and 2003. Cite. That page also has stats for multiple assailant attacks, which are broadly in line with those for single assailants, but I won’t include them for simplicities sake.
The average[1] over the eight year period was 34.9%. Given that I was certainly looking at data from different surveys, I don’t think “about 40%” was that far off the mark.
According to Census data, the total non-white population in 2000 was just over 49 million (35,332,000 black, 2,433,000 Amerindians, 11,275,000 Asian/Pacific) out of a total of just over 275 million, or 17.8%. Half of them will be female. Some of the rest will be children. Some will already be in Prison, i.e., there ‘movements’ are already ‘restricted’. The remainder – at-large, adolescent-or-older, non-white males – amount to about 5% of the population, but account for about 35% of sexual assaults.>
So I ask you again. If it’s right to subject men in general to movement restrictions, why not start with non-white men? If gender profiling is accepable, then why not racial profiling too?
I never said otherwise. The ‘not across racial lines’ side of it would seem to be irrelevent to the matter at hand, unless you consider the rape of non-whites to matter less, or for some other reason to not need the radical solution you proposed.
The ‘most rapes occur in “acquaintance” situations’ side of it would suggest that restrictions should be on association, rather than movement.
It’s up to you whether you accept it or not, but please don’t accuse me of expressing ‘false’ sympathy. It isn’t false, and you have no basis for claiming that it is.
She is blameless for the alledged rapes for reasons I have already articulated. So were you in respect of yours. That has nothing to do with whether or not you were in a safe situation.
[1]This was a naive average. Strictly speaking I should have weighted according to the total number of offences in each year, but I don’t think that would have made much difference.
Daran. Why on earth would you want to “put acquaintanceship rapes aside” when discussing preventing rapes by preventing the movement of rapists? Although many rapes happen in the context of relationships, the majority of “acquaintanceship” rapes are of the sort that someone meets another person, they “click”, and then one rapes the other. Usually in a very short time frame, and very often with alcohol or some other disabling drug used to control the victim.
How would it in any way substantially alter the rape rate to ignore these rapes, rather than to say, fex, that single men must return to their residences, alone by 9 pm, or that men are not allowed in bars, or that men seen in public with a woman are subject to arrest for “indecency”, or men seen drinking in public are subject to arrest. Or that men must not dress or behave in such as manner as to attract the attention of women. Of course, these are not laws that anyone is seriously considering with regard to men but they are certainly examples of laws or strong social mores that are applied almost universally to women.
And again, your statistics are misleading for the reasons that Ampersand has already discussed, as well as issues involving substantially greater arrest and conviction rates among non-whites vs whites in general. Having grown up around privileged young white men, my experience is that their rate of criminality is exhorbitantly higher than their arrest and conviction rates, and that there is a (well deserved) attitude of “getting away with murder” among the social set. Child molestation rates are fairly stable along racial lines, and since the vast majority of both predatory and opportunistic molesters are family members or close friends, and since most people primarily gather with people of their own friends, it follows that black and white men molest at similar rates. Since most acquaintanceship rates are also same-race, and also are far less likely to be reported or even acknowledged as rapes vs. just “bad situations” by the victims, it follows that statistics drawn from the criminal justice system are likely to be skewed along racial lines. This is hypothesis, but it is hypothesis based on victimization numbers that have been pretty well validated over the last couple of decades. I no longer have access to the nifty online scholarly database I used to have access to, but if I were to design a study to determine the racial makeup of rapists, I would start with the demographics of the victims, do a qualitative study to ensure I were barking up the right tree, and then do a large scale quantitative study of women who call rape hotlines (not prosecute, or even come for counseling) to see the demographics of their rapists.
The men are used to getting away with behaving badly.They are giving themselves a bad name by thier own bad actions(e-mail,drunk,disorderly conduct,etc…)Debate is good,to say they are innocent untill they are convicted is only in a court of law,the public need not be in denial.The white male lawyer was wrong to use the word lynch.I am white and was offended right away!The woman is going through a hard time just to tell and stand her ground!This is about class,race,and gender.What would Susan B. Anthony,Elizabeth Cady-Stanton,and Soljouner Truth say!?
why not start with non-white men?
I’m a little puzzled as to why we should “start” with men of a particular skin color.
I think fraidtosayit is confusing a contributory negligence theory of civil liability with criminal responsibility.
That was my first thought, but really I think fraidtosayit is just dressing up “she asked for it” in some legal-sounding language. (Hence the snide remark.)
Mythago:
My use of the phrase “modest proposal” was intended to be a clue that I don’t think we should “start” at all. My point is that the odanu’s suggestion – applied to a different biological group – is indistinguisable from racism.
I agree with you. Also I don’t think “She didn’t protect herself from me adequately” would work as a defence, even in a civil case.
My point is that the odanu’s suggestion – applied to a different biological group – is indistinguisable from racism.
odanu’s suggestion was a ‘modest proposal’ to counter the not-at-all-satirical proposal that the solution to rape is to lock up women. Golda Meir made it first, I believe.
I’m debating it with odanu, not Golda Meir. It doesn’t look satirical to me, nor has anyone suggested here that the solution to rape was to lock women up or that women should lock themselves up.
fraidtosayit….I agree with you that the alleged rape victim bares some responsibility in the decisons she makes for herself, especially when it come to her own safety. However, you’re argument suggests that she brought the “alleged rape” on herself by not performing more responsible work. You have effectively introduced a moral question to a situation that is clearly legal. At last check, it is not a crime to strip. Although, some find it stripping morally questionable. Because she engages in morally questionable activities, it does not give one the right to cross lines of legality and allegedly violate her to the point of a crime. Stripping is a moral choice. Rape is a legal crime. The alledged victim stands on one side, while the alledge perpetrators stands on the other. Neither can bare responsibility for the line the other chooses to cross.
I am angry how the media has come to these low life men’s defense. They’re already suggesting punishment for the victim because she’s a liar in their eyes. There is not one woman who is going to tear her own vagina.These people are out of their minds. The news media is so racist and sick. I don’t think this country will ever learn. God help us all. I just hope their sons and daughters will never be raped, God spare these racist people from their own selves. RAPE IS A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE CRIME ON ANYONE.
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